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thanks, the Shredder is a huge beast, not the greatest model to build, but impressive when done.

The F-22 is the 1/48th Hasegawa one and gee it is big (bigger than I thought it would be), a "interesting" model to build. As mentioned someone has started it, the weapons bays could be recovered and the cockpit was pretty bad, so will probably end up closing it.

The paint job will be interesting, the colours look like they'll have to be custom mixes. Mr. Paint has released a special Have Glass clear, so may give that a try. One this one is out of the way I'll spend some more time on her.

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Well all the major painting is completed, I just need to clear coat it before moving onto the next stage.

Today’s work was the painting of the spine and drop tank.

The masking was removed from the spine, she looked smart just with the white base coat!

The areas to be red were masked off and then painted. I painted the entire or the spine red just so the black will be even. The was left to cure and harden for a while, it was completely touch dry a few minutes after painting.

While this was happening, I started masking up the drop tank. I masked and painted this in 2 steps. First the lower black section was painted, then with some careful masking the black strip was added.

It turned out really nice and I nailed it first go….not too sure what to do with the spare red tank now!

Will give it a clear coat tomorrow but it’s done and just needs the decals.

By now the red on the spine was hard enough for masking ready for the black. Again the MRP Super Matt Black went on like a dream. It’s really thinned down and needed multiple coats, but the resulting finish is amazing. I airbrushed it on at super low pressure, it goes on a bit grainy/orange peel but dries super smooth!

I couldn't wait the remove the masks to see the results, so it only sat there for the time it takes me to clear the airbrush before the masks came off……

….and here’s the results!

Just perfect, the rear section was the one I was worried about the most if I’d used decals, but it’s perfect. Maybe a touch to long and sharp but I can’t find good detailed photos of this area, so I’m happy with how it is.

So this is where she’s at, a couple of minor over-sprays fixed and ready for a clear coat. The time taken to paint that red strip was really worth it.

At the rate she’s going I should have her done by the end of the long weekend with luck.

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Ok I need to get this off my chest right away…and at the risk of being banned I would just like to say the people behind these decals really need to be hung by their gentleman parts!

The decals look nice and for the most part do go on ok even if they’re a bit thick……

….but everything else about them is diabolical!

The instructions???? …. the big decals, well it pretty easy to work out where they go….sort of! Though when compared to the real thing you find there are position errors and they don’t seem to match up with the positions of other decals

Small decals well you’re pretty much left on your own to try and figure out where they go. Which is not helped by some of them coming in grey and black, with no instructions as to which ones to use where.

........trying to find the decals…well good luck with that…if you’re good at “Where’s Wally” you’ll be prefect at this. They have hidden them all over the place, hardly any are grouped together, rather a case of "where can I fit these"!! There are no reference numbers to go with them, not helped by some looking very similar to others. A couple of times I cut out and tried to put on the wrong ones! Finally there seemed to have been a competition to try and see how many decals one can stuff on to one sheet of decal paper!!! A scalpel is the only way you’re going to cut these out. Surly there's not a world wide shortage of paper for decals......toilet paper I can believe!

Rant over… the decaling process was rather long and frustrating (all day)…worse being the VFA-31 Arrow on the spine. I’ll admit that I have the cheat line a bit too low, but in my defence I only had the instruction side views to go by, which gave you no help in working out the correct position. The cheat lines edges don’t actually follow any panel lines so it’s proper position is pretty much guess work…..which I now know I didn’t quite get right. It was too late when I found this out. Not helping is that these arrows are not right either, after going over all the photos of the real bird the arrowhead is the wrong shape and the font is a bit odd.

Anyway I’m stuck now with what I have unfortunately, it looks ok just as long as you don’t try to match it to photos of the rear one.

The other decals without too many dramas, but I used the reference photos for positioning rather than the instruction pictures.

It was the first time I used the Ammo Mig’s decal solution, wow this stuff is amazing!!! The thick decals really didn’t want to sit nicely on the tail, a dab of the #2 Softener and they ended up looking like they were painted on!!! Really worth getting bottles of this stuff if you can.

Finally I’ve just about finished off the weapons and pylons, just need to do the decals and they’re done.

I still have all those small decals to sort out, I’ll see if the Hasegawa instructions will help, I can’t use those decals as the colour of those are for a different aircraft. I can give a few bits their final clear coat, but the fuselage will have to wait till the final decals have settled down…so tomorrow.

There are plenty of other little jobs to complete…..still on track to complete her this long weekend.

All ranting aside I do love this scheme, she looks so smart and colourful, my next F-14D will have to be one of these colourful schemes!

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thanks...though I think it got revenge on me yesterday!!! For some reason the red on one of the tails went whitish in places when the clear coat went one????

Have no idea why caused that, the softening solution wasn't left on too long, everything was wiped down again before the clear coat....but now it looks faded....not really the look I as after, too late to correct so it'll just have to stay.

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thanks.... am going to put her aside for a couple of days. The paint issue is bugging me too much at the moment so will do something else to take my mine off it.

It wasn't the decal softening solution like I thought it was. But now looking like there's been a reaction with the MRP clears with this SMS Red paint. I have only used the SMS clears before and only as the final coat.

Anyway don't have too much left on her to do and still 2 months to go, so plenty of time!

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Thanks. The tail would be ok if the plane was quite weathered as you see the plain grey ones. But in all photos I've seen of this particular aircraft I've seen, she appears to be in nice condition.

There are 2 variations of this scheme as well the earlier one looks the same but is for the 75th anniversary of the squadron (2010) and has the dates in front of the arrows, 1935 to 2010. The version I'm doing is after this, all the photo's I've seen are dated 2014, the date is now missing and the scheme looks quite fresh, though one photo does show the spine and upper surfaces to be quite faded and grubby in appearance. But it has a strange black marking/symbol on the folded section of the port wing?

There is also a 3rd even earlier version i just noticed that has the completely black tail with red flash at the top and yellow Felix, 2008 according to the photo.

this is the site I've been using for my reference photo's of this particular aircraft. It's an awesome site for getting great photo's of UN Navy aircraft and history of the squadrons.

I hadn’t quite expected to be back on her but a wee drama with my Spitfire builds (I was planning to paint them before I realised I hadn’t fitted the wings yet!), so I had an opportunity to continue one with her.

Ok these weird issues with the paint fading only affected the red on the tail, one side particularly and only in a couple of spots (RH one in photo around the AJ, less so on the LH one).

I can’t repaint them without damaging the decals and I really don’t want to buy a new set just for them, so what to do.

The answer has sort of come from one photo I found on the site I’m using for VFA-31 reference photos. One photo shows this aircraft looks a bit more weathered than the others. The spine looks quite matt and dirty (as with the rest of the upper surfaces), the tail is a bit harder to see, but I expect it to be a bit faded as well. I had planned this to be nice and clean looking as in most of the photos, but will now go with the more weathered version.

That sorted back to work.

She was given a nice coat of MRP Flat Clear all over, than a coat of SMS Flat Clear only on the upper surfaces as seen from above. The SMS Flat clear is a super flat clear and is perfect for that sun faded look. Being out in the elements the top surfaces tend to fade quicker than the less exposed surfaces, though with modern paint I don’t expect the differences to be too great. The use of the 2 Flat Clears gives a nice subtle look to the finish, I’ve done this before on a couple of other builds.

Of course I remembered after this that I stall had a couple of bits that needed painting on the nose area, seen here once done!

I’m happy with where she is now I have a plan to go forward. I have 1 decal to add to the new painted grey section on the LHS, then I can give her the final clear coat.

I'll have to see if I can find the the "Tomcatters" name in black somewhere for the grey drop tank that was sometimes fitted to her.

With the weathering now I will go quite heavy with it, along the lines of me earlier Tomcat. I don’t have a finish date quite insight yet as I what to have my Spitfire done by ANZAC Day (25th), so I need to press on with them but will do more on her as time permits.

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A master class in masking with the spine and fuel tanks. I see what you mean about the decal sheet, it seems that many American companies do this, cram as much as they can on one sheet and it then is a struggle to find which decal is which and where it goes. Well done with the decaling process.